I have a somewhat dangerous habit of coming up with ideas that sound great but are harder to execute than I imagined. It’s probably good I have amnesia, otherwise I’d never do anything…er…fun. I’ve taught Jr. High for the last two years with Classical Conversations and wanted more than anything to take my class to a castle or ruins somewhere where they could actually see, and touch and experience all of the history and Latin they learn from (in their opinion) dusty tomes. Then I got to thinking, why not? If you look and wait long enough, you can find super cheap plane tickets to Europe, and with enough people you could rent an Airbnb and wha-la! Throw in a little help and hard work and surely it could actually happen.

And it did… or is… or will be Lord willing. Next week I’m headed to Rome with most of my Challenge B class and their parents. When I’m not panicking about losing a kid in the catacombs or winding up at the US Embassy with missing passports, I think I’ll actually enjoy myself.

Jamie keeps asking me if he can wash the windows or clean out the garage…. really anything to earn money for Rome. In CA there are no lawns to mow and no papers for teenagers to deliver. You can’t get a job at McDonald’s yet and families aren’t in the market for 13 year old male babysitters. He wanted to try a lemonade stand, but I told him to think of something more useful. Something that would actually be helpful (since no one is really dying of lemonade dehydration here, especially after the rainy winter we had).

This is what he came up with. Multiplication flashcards that are funny and quirky. Easy to remember and difficult to forget. Jamie has always been slightly dyslexic and has had to come up with creative ways to learn things that come easier for other kids. Some of the ways that help things “stick” are to make it colorful. Make it funny. Put the answer in a different color. Put both the problem and the answer on the same side so you can take a visual “picture” of them together. And to put the commutative law so you can learn two for the price of one. So here you have it: Multiplication Flashcards for those who struggle to memorize things (or for people who like classical art?)

If you like them, want them, or just want to help Jamie raise money for Rome, hit the donate button at the bottom. He’ll email you a full resolution PDF of all the multiplication flashcards 1-10. Any size donation will get you these super awesome, totally hilarious, completely appropriate flashcards.

I had the hair-brained idea to get extensions (literally I guess). Sometimes I worry my thought process runs on a permanent slippery slope fallacy. I start out thinking about homemade kefir and somehow end up eating store bought ice cream. In my head the transition is always seamlessly logical. I barely even notice going from kefir recipes, to raw milk sources, to researching ice cream makers on Amazon to settling for Trader Joe's coconut milk ice cream, to "Oh, well Walmart is closer and I'll buy the stuff with real cream and sugar" to "oh hey, sale on the store brand." Ho hum.

Some people are born with the ability to know what's socially acceptable and some people have to make themselves a spreadsheet and flowchart to know whether or not it's ok to shave your legs...but not your arms. Or fake fingernails are ok, but not fake fingers. Push-up bras are fine, but fake boobs are suspect. For whatever reason, it's perfectly acceptable to color your hair, but not add fake hair. As someone with naturally curly hair, this has never really kept me up at night until recently when I was diagnosed with a subset of health conditions that has resulted in less than stellar locks.

So I did what any normal person does and went straight to Amazon, then coerced a sister into installing my newly purchased 100% Human Hair Remy locks. After I had an ethical crisis imagining some sort of Gift Of The Magi situation, I pictured myself sauntering around looking like this.

Instead I ended up more looking like this:

Pros: I had more hair than Ariel, Elsa and Rapunzel put together (Ok, maybe not Rapunzel). It braided beautifully, went up in a messy bun like I was born to be a nonchalant movie star with over-sized sunglasses, and my kids kept staring at me and backing away slowly.

Cons: It clumped up and wouldn't blend with my regular hair, itched terribly, and I couldn't sleep. For those who don't like Jamberry or other sticker nails because of the way it feels like wearing a maxi pad on your finger... skip hair extensions altogether because that's exactly what it felt like, but on your head.

Also, note to self: If the price is too good to be true, it will probably melt like green plastic army men.

I stubbornly stuck with it though. My fake clumpy hair extensions were fabulous. I discovered a newfound appreciation for runway models, people with naturally long/heavy hair, and anyone else who has to endure weirdness in the name of aesthetics. I was trying to teach my 9yr old the difference between a direct object and an object complement noun and after the third time picking long stray hairs off his face, he said "Mom, I can't even take you seriously right now.". Fair enough.

So after a day of Jordan Petersoning all of my life's goals and taking a good hard look at my narcissistic tendencies, the hair extensions went back in the box and I resumed the normal pinned up and glasses look I've been sporting for years. It's fine. Better this way. On Mondays I teach a bunch of cute little preschoolers/kindergartners, and on Wednesdays I teach a bunch of equally cute but rather tall jr. highers, so channeling my inner Professor McGonagall instead of Trelawney is probably the better way to go.

Next I plan to shave my head and wear a different wig for every day of the week (I kid, I kid...maybe).

Oh, and if you're in the same boat with the whole teaching nouns thing. And "No No D.O (direct object), label verb transitive" is a common refrain in your house. You might also try "Replace? Yes. Amen, label O.C.N. (object complement noun)" or "Describe? Yes. Hooray, label O.C.A. (object complement adjective)".

On the orders of an urgent care doctor who gave me instructions to de-stress my life , I'm attempting to start writing again (perhaps dubious advice since it came from inside a very glass house, the doctor being a self-professed stressed out mom herself... ahem), Like half the country this year, we've spent the last two months in bed, coughing our lungs up, puking, blowing out radioactive gunk or trying to recover long enough to catch whatever new virus is trending that week. All New Year's resolutions have been traded in for survival tactics. Sometimes when we've eaten cold cereal for all three meals, gone through three loads of towels in a day, and bought stock options in paper plates and Clorox wipes, I wonder how anyone ever survived in the pre-Costco/Walmart days.

It's embarrassing.

I cope with the guilt by pinning healthy things on Pinterest and liking Instagram pictures of beautiful people lifting weights and running on the beach.

But today we were all well enough to go on the symphony field trip and it was healing balm... literally, since the techno base in the spaceship piece was so heavy and vibratoriousit worked as a legit medical procedure. And for the first time William was able to sit through the whole thing which makes me feel like we hit a major milestone. He's been cracking us up lately. Ever since he started bawling his eyes out whenever he heard Pentatonix's "Hallelujah" we realized that he's super sensitive to music. I'm not sure what career requires the ability to slowly choke up and sob on demand, but so far we have a repertoire of Brahms lullaby, Gershwin's "An American in Paris", the Getty hymn "In Christ Alone", and Disturbed's "Sound of Silence". He can also keep a beat and count a rhythm better than any of his older brothers, but we seem to have been shortchanged when musical genes were being passed out, so there are noexpectations on him to be some sort of prodigy. Still, it was nice to sit in Copley auditorium and watch him laugh, cry and sit wide eyed through the whole performance.

The grammar and theory of music is just starting to click for my two older kids. I think they're finally reaching the age where explanations make sense to them. The San Diego symphony put out a great lesson pack for their current concert and it's a fantastic resource just as a quick dive into any sort of musicology. I highly recommend it. You can find all of the pieces on YouTube. And you can download the Symphony curriculum for free here.

In the 21st century it's so easy to feel like everything is at your fingertips all of the time, but there is really no comparison between hearing Mendelssohn via an electronic device and hearing it played right in front of you in a large hollow space with hundreds of pieces of wood, stretched out sheep guts, and oddly shaped metal.

My childhood brain nearly imploded once when I overheard a learned adult hypothesize Samson was actually a scrawny guy. Blasphemy! Didn't they see the super accurate pictures on my Sunday School coloring page? But in a way, it kinda makes sense. Would everyone have been amazed by his strength if he looked like the Hulk with muscles rippling out like four Dwayne Johnson's stacked two high and two wide? Or would they have been more shocked if he had the typical dad-bod yet could swing a lion around like a small cat and go on a mass murdering spree with nothing but a donkey jaw?

That sums up how I feel about my two year old right now. He's a bit tiny for his age, although he does actually grow occasionally because I noticed recently his belly was starting to stick out of his 9-12 month shirts (which is unacceptable because we don't allow immodest crop tops in this household, so I promptly took it off and let him go shirtless). But despite having three other boys whose antics were very similar, I can't seem to help but marvel at the sheer insanity that is me trying to keep up with my youngest. But since we wrote down his older siblings' stories it would be remiss not to also chronicle his shenanigans: In a way, he's both easier and more difficult than Jamie was. Easier because I already survived one child who never sleeps and climbs everything, so I can sit this one out from the lofty towers of complacency. But it's harder because I don't have the time, energy or desire to train this last one or work as hard as I did with the first one. It really is true the youngest is more spoiled. I thought maybe it was just my jaded perspective as a firstborn, but unless everyone else is doing a much better job with their caboose child (don't answer that), I'm thinking this can safely move from theory to fact.

When Jamie climbed out of his crib, Jim and I waited in the dark below his crib, rose up and went all Walking Dead whenever he attempted to climb out. That didn't work so well with William because a) it kept his brothers awake more than it served as a compelling reason to stay in his crib and b) like all strict parenting books tell you, you CAN train a child to be obedient, but while he did eventually learn to go to bed at bedtime, that didn't stop him from getting up in the middle of the night and raiding the pantry and fridge like a raccoon. c) no amount of training kept him from getting up for the day at 4:30/5:00 am.

So we bought a sleep tent for the tidy sum of $100 (which I blogged about before) but was guaranteed to give exhausted parents a safe place to put their child during sleeping hours. Within a week he broke the front panel out...just pushed his finger through the rip proof nylon until he got enough of an indentation to get a good grip, rip it open and emerge victorious in the baby game of Survivor. We fixed that which earned us a whole month of sleep before he figured out how to wiggle the zipper down enough to make quick work of the rest (if he was smart, he would have figured that out first). We used a carabiner after that to lock the zipper shut and that got us all the way to last night when Jim and I had just settled on the couch for a relaxing evening of Sherlock, bourbon and sewing projects when we heard a suspicious amount of bumping and activity going on in the back bedroom. Jim went to go check and discovered our small son razing havoc like a small Tasmanian devil ping-ponging around the room.

We assumed he'd just busted the carabiner lock (which had happened before), but no...he had ripped the entire tent off its base. I assume, judging by the five star reviews, that this is not a common occurrence for other owners of this tent. And he seriously looks too small to do anything remotely that powerful, which is why I'm henceforth dubbing him my Samson toddler. He may not talk very well, and he may not be super well behaved, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to lock up the donkey jawbones.

The TV is back on the wall. Shame. But I avoided a useless ER trip, so Yay?

I did fork out a fair chunk of change to be told my child is full of crap...literally full of crap, but hey, you win some, you lose some. The TV rode in (magically transformed from dragon to knight on a white horse) to rescue Jim who had to work from home while I took the aforementioned kid to the Dr (with what I thought was appendicitis, but turned out to be an impacted colon). Thankfully it's nothing a bottle of magnesium and caution tape around the bathroom can't fix.

I also added another boy to the brood for the week, which has worked out well (most notably it turned up the notch on hilarious conversations overheard and the amount of food consumed), but suffice it to say there isn't a lot of extra time for me to read the growing pile of books next to my bed.

Like any good (mostly) millennial worth her salt, I have read books on how to read books. And my book stacks have baby book stacks. So if your life is as crazy as mine and your Amazon and library lists are equally out of control, here is the cliff notes version of what some recent experts say and my own experience with their advice.

1. Books have grammar and not the punctuation kind.

Thomas Foster talks about this in his "How To Read Literature Like A College Professor", but you also see it if you read blogs written by publishers, editors, and agents. There is a grammar and structure to how the whole "written with words" world works (say that five times fast) and if you understand it, then your reading speed and comprehension automatically picks up speed because you can proverbially pick the cross-titch off the frame and look at the backside. It also sorta lets you see the motivations and humanity behind the author (for better or worse). I recommend reading the aforementioned book, as well as "Save the Cat" and any book on how to write non-fiction.

My takeaway: Take a few books and really think about the structure and behind-the-scenes systems that go into making a book, and you'll find subsequent books are easier and faster to grasp.

2. Speed reading may be pseudoscience, but it helps with the boring stuff.

My takeaway: I think speed reading is a bit like being told spinach will make you strong like Popeye. It won't, but it's still good for you. The neuroscience peeps are undecided on speed reading, but I find it useful nonetheless.

3. Write A Review and don't say "Love it" or "It Sucks".

One of the best ways to transfer information from your short-term memory to your long-term memory is to be able to articulate to someone what you learned. Even more important, doing something physiological and slow after you've done something mental and fast, is insanely beneficial for your brain and its ability to process, build connections, and operate smoothly. Thus writing review accomplishes both of those things while also providing a good "reason" to do so (vs just writing it in a journal for the pure exercise of it). In the book "Thinking Fast And Slow" Dr. Daniel Kahneman shows how our brains adapted to take in information a certain way and make instant judgments on it. Slow thinking is harder, more meticulous and apparently more rational.

My takeaway: Pick up a pen. While fast reading and processing in this hectic age of information is a necessary and laudable skill, any way you can get yourself to also exercise and use "slow" thinking, will help concepts stick better and serve as a cautionary safety net.

In case none of those are helpful, here are the honorable mentions (in no particular order):Read lots of books at onceIt's ok if some books take a few days and others take yearsFigure out the central premise of each book by reading the contents and footnotes firstRealize that non-fiction can be more fictitious than fictionFind books you think you'll disagree with, and read them anyway

And that's it, I'm off to disinfect the toilet and pay my library fines...we'll see if I actually remember any of this in a week.

Warning: You are entering a moderation-free zone. Cultish rocks ahead.

Jim and I took our giant flat screen TV off the wall, wrapped it in blankets and put it in the garage in a small space between the freezer and a tall tool rack. I'm not sure how long it's going to hang out in its new real estate, but after a week of struggling to keep it off, and then a regression back to insanity, we put it out there out of pure frustration.

This is how my morning usually goes. Jamie and William are up before any rooster would even dream of deciding it's daylight. I turn on something like Little Einsteins in a half dead zombie walk and then go back to bed. By the time I get up during the normal human zone of 6:00-6:30, the TV has already staked out its claim on my day. And wrenching it back is like wrestling a dragon. People like to think dragons don't exist anymore, but they do. Mine go by names of "Netflix" and "Ipads" and "Minecraft".

The problem with dragons is that they're not traditionally easy to kill right? If it was a simple matter of hacking up your TV in the front driveway with a machete like some sort of post-modern Braveheart then we'd all do it in a heartbeat. Self-righteous parenting books, articles (and adults over the age of 50) make it sound so simple: Just limit your kid's screen time to NONE if you're a good parent, and 30 minutes a day if you're the weaker brethren. Fine. Wonderful. But modern monasticism isn't a tenable strategy. Maybe the next Steve Jobs will have been raised on an organic goat farm with nothing but dragonflies and dandelions to keep them entertained, but this household makes up the peasant folk for sure.

And so we're left battling the dragons in the pig pen because moderation is a thing worth fighting for (even if it means you constantly have to repair the fences in the North field too). Although with the TV dragon currently vanquished to the garage with a blanket over its head, and the rest of the little dragons hidden away in an underwear drawer, I must say it's been kind of nice. Here are three "stop and smell the daisies" type of things I noticed today.

The Whining Went Away

Sure, the kids built a parkour course in the living room, I had to bathe the two youngest ones twice, and at one point in time, my living room was covered in cardboard and Elmer's glue. But no one told me they were bored, or tired, or cold, or hot or any of the other thousand little things that I thought were real things but now I'm wondering if they weren't just hind-brain justifications for wanting to watch TV.

They Enjoyed School

This one surprised me. Instead of falling apart at the drop of a hat when they didn't understand something, or moaning at the sheer magnitude of work their terrible mean mother makes them do, they actually did double the school today with nary a fuss. I think it was because there was no reason to get through it fast and when you're homeschooled, learning is easily mistaken for just hanging out and having fun with mom. Kids aren't born hating chemistry or stories.

They Talked More

Maybe for some people, this would be a hard negative but in this Scandinavian-esque male household, I'm always thrilled when people decide to use real words instead of grunt or punch. There are those studies that show the more extroverted and talkative the mother is, the earlier her kids will learn to talk. This study clearly did not take into account my husband's strong stoic genes which apparently canceled out all of my talkative ones since I can rack up word counts with the best of them. Today though, I not only heard a lot of sapient conversation going on, but the smallest one was talking too! Winning!

In conclusion...

I don't expect it to work so well tomorrow, but I enjoyed today anyway. I think part of the reason there was such a stark difference was because the TV was physically gone. It's hard to bargain for something that's tangibly missing. It helps I'm not strong or big enough to get it in from the garage if I wanted. Sometimes I get so stuck in the abstract world, that I forget something simple like not just saying we're going to watch less TV, but actually moving the solid object so you match the corporeal with the abstract.

Whole30 is amazing. A super easy and rewarding journey filled with absolutely delicious food that you'd be happy to eat for the rest of your life.

Jk.

It's really a time consuming, difficult monster that will take over your life and kitchen (and keep it in such a state of towering dirty dishes and pots, you will contemplate burning the whole thing down and moving to a different state). And that's not even counting the cost which can be enormous if you're not expecting it.

But after five (or six?) times, you start to come up with strategies. So here is the ultimate way to do whole thirty on a budget (at least in my experience), when the desire to do whole thirty is tempered by your lack of money. If you're trying to do the most inexpensive Whole30, this is the secret:

Don't be picky.

For real though, in this day and age, you can find inexpensive, cheap food for whole30 but it requires reversing the order you do things.

i.e you type in "Whole30" on Pinterest and get hundreds of pictures of beautiful, mouth-watering dishes. If you join any groups or follow any whole30'ers on Instagram you see platefuls and recipes for delicious foods.

And maybe they work for those people without spending too much money, but in order to do Whole30 cheaply, you have to completely reverse your thinking. Instead of picking what you want to eat and making a grocery list, you buy 1. Meat, 2. Veggies, 3. Fat that can be procured on sale and inexpensively.

Total $220 per month$220/4people= $55That's $55 for one person per month, not week.

Cook up massive amounts of meat at once, and steam/saute/roast veggies on Sunday night if you are able. Then every night, figure out what veggie and protein you're having the next day. Sample: Squash and sausage for breakfast, broccoli, and chicken for dinner, sweet potato and roast for dinner. Simple, but effective.

STEP 2

You can totally eat delicious, nutritious, flavorful food that gives you an adequate amount of calories for a month with the above menu. But most people have a little more money than that...even most food stamp programs will give you $50/week per person. So fill in the edges with whatever is on sale...

tomatoesbananaszucchiniorangesapplesceleryginger Lemons/limes

Often give you the most bang for your buck as far as expanding the things you can cook. Avocados, homemade mayo, ghee, nuts, coconut aminos, fancy oils etc are things that DO NOT give you the most bang for your buck. And while they're nice, they're also expensive and unnecessary even though they're super popular in the Whole30 world. If you really are trying to do Whole 30 on a budget, google recipes based on what ingredients you have vs just browsing, because you'll get depressed at all the super expensive food everyone else is eating.

CONCLUSION

I firmly believe anyone can afford Whole30, but you have to have a mindset of abundance. Imagine you are a wealthy medieval lord who is collecting rents from the peasants and there was a bumper crop of sweet potatoes and onions that year. Be amazed that you can have chicken and beef on the same day. Eat like royalty because it's 2017, don't feel sorry for yourself that everyone else is eating something different. In the grand scheme of the world, avocados aren't more important than coconuts, and the healthy fat from the later is cheaper. We're so sucked in by trends and doing what people around us are doing, we lose sight of the big picture which is this: There is an excess of food in the Northern Hemisphere. Find it, procure it, and eat it with a grateful attitude. Eat veggies and meat for breakfast (pretend some Viking ghost is looking down at you and nodding with satisfaction). Live above the fray.

And reap the benefits of sleeping better, having more energy, thinking more clearly and equalizing to a healthy weight. Even if you just do it once as an experiment, I think it's a bit like shaving your head or getting a tattoo (just the less permanent version). The whole world just looks sort of different. It shows you patterns in your body you may not have noticed before. And it builds healthy systems and habits.

Have fun and if you hate it, feel free to tell me so.

RANDOM FOOTNOTES

-If you're single or can't afford to buy in bulk like this plan requires, find a few friends who will do it too and split it with you. -If you live in a big city, find the restaurant supply district and figure out how to get plugged in. -If you don't have a Costco membership, find a friend who does or see above. -This plan assumes you have a fully stocked spice cupboard, but if you don't... salt, garlic and fat cover a multitude of sins but I would recommend at least getting some vinegar (which thankfully is cheap).

I used to hate it when my parents sat us all down for a "family pow wow". They were epic come to Jesus talks that usually ended with us all getting up early, doing more chores and sorting out whatever major attitude problems were shaping up into WWIII. I loathed them so much, that early in our marriage when Jim casually mentioned "let's pow wow" I broke out into a cold sweat and treated the poor man like he'd just suggested a flogging post and torture rack.

Now I have four kids, and although the word "pow wow" is still strictly forbidden, I realized I totally do the same thing. Negotiating with a two year old is a slippery slope where you think peeling a banana a certain way or watching a show in the morning is not a big deal, and then before you know it you're standing on your head, holding your mouth a certain way and angling the banana so it correctly lines up with the earth's magnetic field as you peel it at 5 am while you watch the same dinosaur train episode. ...and you don't even know how it got this bad.

Multiply that by four, throw in the end of CC and state testing and it's no wonder people commonly burn out this time of year.

So I sat all of the kids down and told them we were having a week reset of absolutely no fun (you have to set the standard super low so something like playing math bingo feels like you're getting away with murder). We're doing nothing but learning poetry, reading books, doing math and re-learning how to play nicely with our siblings. I cleaned up our food while I was at it, because I figured you might as well bum everyone out with one swift kick in the pants. Our diet had slipped from pizza occasionally and cold cereal as an emergency backup to such a high level of consumption that they need to come up with a new scientific classification of consumers for us: Herbivores, Carnivores, Omnivores and the Junkavores.

It had gotten so bad even Jamie was craving healthy food. He's become so big and responsible this year (mostly) that he can babysit for short periods and go places independently. So when he kept bugging me and bugging me for lentil soup, I finally just handed him my card and told him if he wanted it that bad he was going to have to do it himself.

...and I was surprised he called my bluff, but he did. He walked to the grocery store and asked someone where the leeks and lentils were located, used the self checkout and was home in ten minutes total. Jim and I teased him later that the only reason someone didn't get him into trouble was because they probably had never met a potentially troublesome sixth grader shopping for lentils and leeks. Ahem.

I wonder sometimes if other families have to go through the monumental, boot slogging task of feeling like they have to troubleshoot every.single.area of their kids' lives. Oftentimes it seems like my kids only struggle struggle struggle, and never succeed. Everything needs extra work and effort, nothing comes easy. We were back to forming ABC's today like we're in Kindergarten to fix a bunch of letter reversals that have been cropping up lately. William probably needs speech therapy too, but there is a limit to how many "therapies" one can juggle in a week, and his issues are mild (in comparison). But see? It's a constant state of triage on who needs the most help. Of course after three kids who needed speech therapy to even start talking, I feel like at this point I should just write my own. "Speech Bootcamp For Stubborn Toddlers: The at home guide for parents who want to hear something other than 'EEEEEEEEGHH!' all day"

But hey, two days in and everyone is doing a lot better (food wise, school wise, and behavior wise) so maybe my parents were on to something with their "pow wows". And honestly there are worse things than sitting home all day eating watermelon and homemade beef jerky while you build epic train tracks and read Laddie aloud. But in defense of electronics and Netflix... Jamie said there wasn't one thing on his common core state test that wasn't in Wild Kratz and Magic Schoolbus. So there.

The ropes cutting into the skin on my wrists prevented me from catching myself as I was thrown down. The raw rough wooden boards sent splinters through the skin on my chin. I rolled over and moved my jaw, relieved to find it wasn’t broken despite the bone-numbing crunch of my face coming in contact with the ground.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see there was a large crowd gathered for my trial. I registered faces I knew, the cook with a worried expression on her face, a group of small boys, Aimee and the rest over by Matilda who looked calmly elegant in her dark green gown. Johanne wasn’t there. She had agreed to boil cloth for me in herbs...madame Gilfre having disappeared again. Hairy Henry didn’t seem like he was trying to be gentle like he’d promised as he half dragged half kicked me to the foot of a chair that looked like one of those giant rocking chairs at Cracker Barrel. I forced myself to look up. I would have expected the chair to make even the pope look small and ridiculous. The thing was so over the top, were those caterpillars carved on the side? But Sir Nicolas de Flandres, heir to a small country and First Knight of William of Normandy looked like he’d been born for the chair. I dropped my face quickly before I could make eye contact with him.

The courtyard could have held a high school football field and I could see the tiny window of my bedroom and the larger arches of the woman’s salon peering down like spectators themselves. Graventsteen was like a living thing, a giant stone troll with its arms crossed and eyebrows waggling at me.

We were on a raised platform in the center of the courtyard. And the whole set up smacked terribly of a bad movie. Course it kinda was, we were the actors putting on a show to remind everyone you shouldn’t do stupid things. I’d once had a patient in the ER who’d painted his car to look like a police cruiser. He’d run over himself in his haste to ditch the car after he’d been caught. Finding myself occupying the same categorical space as him came as a bit of a blow.

“Emilie of unknown origins and family, you stand accused of debasement of the worst kind, rejecting thy God ordained life and seeking through treachery and deception to occupy a title not granted thee.”

I allowed myself to look up. Nicolas’s eyes held all the fiery reserve you’d want to see in a harbinger of justice and lordly command, but his cheeks were pale and he looked like he hadn’t slept much since I’d last seen him. … not that I had either.

My crimes were read by Father Pierre and included stealing shoes, clothes bread and gillyweed? It went on and on so long I began to wonder if it was customary for everyone to sneak in other crimes in an effort to take care of the local crime statistics all in one go, or if there was a more sinister purpose.

“It is not just against our loyal Comte and his esteemable family that these heinous crimes were committed, but against the people of the village, the hunters, the gathersmen, the church and nay even God heeself that this unrepentant harlot stands in judgment.”

“But I’m not…” I started to object, but a look from Nicolas and a small shake of his head shut me up. Gah, I see now why he’d wanted to discuss a plan… hopefully he had one. It seemed perhaps a tad bit too thorough. And what motivation could he possibly have for caring at all? I had no family, no connections and had only caused trouble...making me disappear permanently was likely in the best interests of all involved.

After the priest finished, the witnesses were called. They came forward in a steady stream. Relaying in great detail how they’d witnessed me foaming at the mouth running naked down the road. I would have liked to point out I was only half naked, and there certainly was no foam involved, and they’d be slightly unnerved as well if they found themselves walking down Sunset Blvd a thousand years in the future. I was grateful that none of my friends among Matilda’s ladies were coming forward. And Henry (I should really stop calling him “Hairy”) made a very gallant speech on my behalf (although I couldn’t quite tell if it was a poem he’d memorized or if it was just unintelligible to me).

Nicolas very sternly marked off and added crimes to the list. On the testament of the cook and weaver, I was no longer guilty of stealing food or clothing. But I was now guilty of consuming treasonous amounts of mustard weed which could only be used for nefarious deeds though no one could think of why since it was only good for childbirth (reason being it was a natural antiseptic, but no one, of course, asked me).

“She gave me to put cabbage and clay on a sorcerous stone in me breast Mi’lord”. It was the young mom with mastitis that first day on the road. In retrospect, I may have been a tee tad bit too intense. “She said to nurse my babe upside down. Would cure me of the fevers I had.”

“And did it?” Nicolas asked without batting an eyelash.

“Aye sir.” The poor woman clearly didn’t want to discuss her breast health with a nobleman sitting on a giant iron throne, but the priest on one side of her and her husband on the other didn’t leave her much choice. “I didn’t have the cabbage, but the clay and feeding worked mi’lord.”

Father Oran started to ask another question, but Lord Nicolas was already calling up the next witness. The young mother stood frozen for a second as she surveyed the crowd, and I realized she was almost as overwhelmed by the large mass of excited bodies as I was.

She was hurried off the stage though as the next witness was led up. It was hard to understand what was being said, I needed a dictionary and Wikipedia. It seemed that the there was a big difference between my crimes against the church and my crimes against the Lord Comte and I couldn’t make heads or tails of which was what even though it was clear from the faces around me that it made perfect sense to everyone else here. The father was not an unkind man. I liked him. He had deep lines in his face that I imagine must have been dimples when he was a baby. Did his mother know he was going to grow up to hold such a position or had he been thrust upon it? And Nicolas, he had been born to this life, but he looked at it so differently than I expected. Less like a spoiled monarch living in luxury and almost like an attending physician who was trying to keep all of his patients alive until his shift was over. As such, he wasn’t about to prescribe something he felt was dangerous nor was he likely to risk letting a virulently contagious virus run rampant. I just wish that plague wasn’t me.

I felt a sudden weariness. How long could this trial go on? Maybe they would just hang me and be done with it. At the moment that seemed like the least complicated way to go. Even if the best case scenario happened and I was acquitted and given room and board, I still had very little hope of getting back to my own time. I thought I was thinking all of these thoughts quite calmly, but apparently, there was still some part of my brain that was freaking out and didn’t want to die, because my stomach suddenly turned itself out and I found myself vomiting. Embarrassing beyond belief. I kept my head down.

There seemed to be a quietness that settled over the crowd, and I was grateful no one was jeering at me anymore. Fight. Say something. Fight. I didn’t want to, or rather....I wanted to, but I was the type of person who needed information and facts to go on. Some sort of understanding of the situation. Plunging forward without those things had been pounded out of me in my old life.

Nicolas called “Lady Matilde Margaret de Flandres of the House of Rushes” to our raised platform. A gasp spread out of the crowd and Matilda shot her brother a similar look as she graciously walked up the newly hewn steps. She looked like Tinkerbell, a tiny little fairy of beauty and life. It always took me by surprise when she opened her mouth and sounded more like a floor nurse taking charge of an unruly patient.

“Do you have any knowledge or claims upon the woman who standeth before thee?” Father Pierre asked.

The siblings exchanged looks and I wondered if Matilde knew her brother had climbed my window last night. They appeared to be holding some sort of silent argument and Matilde finally threw back her head and said definitely. “I do indeed.”

I held my breath. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the incident with Madame Gilfre and the dress could be accounted for in public. If that happened it was over. They’d drown me in the witch’s chair for sure. I’d have said the same thing myself if I were them. My stomach started to churn again, and cold fingers of chills spread down my back and made the hairs on my neck stand up when I thought about how I’d half disappeared when I put on the red kirtle.

“She has been a gracious addition to my ensemble and I would be loathed to lose her.” She said. I looked up in shock. Her brother narrowed his eyes at her. “As a gentle-born in the pursuits of humility and modesty I have intimate knowledge of innermost dealings of Lady Emilie.”

The crowd appeared impressed with this, but I braced myself.

“...It is my chaste opinion she is clearly not a vassal or peasant and I fear her family must be dreadfully worried about her. I suggest all haste be made to learn of her true identity.”

“Are you in agreement she is possessed of a devil then?” Father Pierre asked, raising an eyebrow.

I tried to read Matilde, but she was imperious and closed as a vault. “I cannot say, father”.

Nicolas appeared thoughtful. Father Pierre whispered something to him and he nodded his head slightly. They talked, heads bent together as Matilde regally made her way back to her cluster of ladies. At length Nicolas stood slowly, his sash and brooch clanked against the pearled dagger and his gold buttons shown in the morning light. The townspeople as a whole bowed as if on command. I bowed too...not intentionally, but because it seemed the natural thing to do.

At length, he beckoned imperiously for me to come forward. The blacksmith unwrapped the chains from the post where I stood. Beside him, the men from the watch stood scanning the crowd looking for trouble.

"Who are you?" he asked clearly and simply. A simple question, with no simple answers. Everyone waited.

“I don’t know your excellency,” I said, and it was the truth. Who was I? Clearly, I didn’t know quite a bit and the bits I did know would never be believed.

Father Pierre leaned forward to say something else to Lord Nicolas, but the Comte’s son put his hand up.

My lower back was aching from standing so long; some of the village people had spread out blankets and were busy pulling out bread and fish to feed their children, my now empty stomach grumbled. But Nicolas began to speak and I promptly forgot all of my physical woes.

“It is the judgment of the house of the Rushes, the crest of de Flandres and the holy offices that there is insufficient evidence to condemn you.” Murmurs spread through the crowd and the ladies court all looked sharply at Matilde to gauge her reaction which was impossible to see on her serene face.

“Escort the maiden to the witches kettle.” Panic struck me and I couldn’t help but strain at my chains, pointless though it was. The crowd was going wild too. I rotten piece of meat was hurled at me, striking me on the side of the head. I could feel maggots crawl in my ear. I was led down the steps and everyone wanted to seem to touch me, whether to judge me for themselves or to get a talisman from me...I wasn’t sure. My clothing was ripped from me and as I got pushed and crushed in the crowd I could see out of the corner of my eye they were ripping the cloth up into smaller sections and passing it out like souvenirs. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and I probably didn’t want to know.

Nicolas’s Mensiefinally beat everyone back enough to lead me through the courtyard and through the main gates. The ground was uneven and I tripped several times. By now I was almost completely naked and I could see Nicolas was studiously avoiding looking at me, although the same couldn’t be said of some of the other men. A small fire had been started by the witch’s chair and there was boiling water. I was pulled up to this and the chains wrapped around the base of the chair. Did they mean to drown me or boil me?

Nicolas looked grim. I could see the muscles in his jaw clenched, but otherwise, he was like his sister. As immovable as a mountain. I hated him in that moment. It didn’t matter what time or century I was in, and it didn’t matter how responsible he felt. The fact that he held all of the power and my fate in his hands made me angry.

“Put your hands out!” I was commanded.

“This is ridiculous!” something in me snapped.

"Please put your hands in the trying waters" Father Pierre ordered calmly proceeding as if he hadn’t heard me.

"What the hell is wrong with all of you!”

The priest looked surprised. "Tis the only way to prove whether ye be truthful or guilty. A trial by boiling water. Yer hands are wrapped, a guilty body festers and boils, an innocent soul is spotless and healed.”

Holy heck. A small part of me remembered and acknowledged this is what we had prepared for...this is what Nicolas had talked about. This is what Johanne was preparing for in the kitchen. But now that I was here the sheer madness of it all was overwhelming. Openmindedness be hanged. This was ridiculous. I fought with every trick I remember from the self-defense class I took with Natasha, but it was like fighting iron. I felt the members of the watch wrap their hands around my arms and bear me forward. I would have thrown up again if I could, but there was nothing left and I saw spots at the corners of my eyes. I must be hyperventilating though I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t even feel myself breathe and I seemed unable to hear anything but a loud rushing sound pounding in my ears as I saw with horrified detachment my arms going forward. I noted the bubbles and saw twigs of something roiling in the water.

It didn’t hurt. I felt nothing.

And then pain exploded as my brain finally caught up and my nerves started functioning. My hands were pulled out and I sagged, my feet unable to hold me up anymore. I wish I could pass out. Being unconscious sounded mercifully tempting, but I stayed miserably conscious as I was born by strong arms through a side archway. I had no idea where they were taking me, and I struggled. My naked skin scraping up against leather. I could feel the cool metal of their swords pressing into my bare hip bones.

I was deposited not ungently onto the floor...I opened my eyes and realized I was in one of the small smoking rooms off the kitchen. A wrapped boar was hanging over my head and I shivered, grateful split second that I hadn’t suffered the same fate as it.

And then Johanne was hovering over me. She wasn’t the type to waste words or be overly motherly, but she gently wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and sponged the dirt off my face. “Do ye need to sleep milady?” She asked, seeing me close my eyes.

“No,” I said. “Have you boiled the bandages” It wasn’t tiredness she was noticing, but my body going into shock. Do you have some water and more blankets? I asked. “And maybe some chamomile?” She nodded. I’d arranged them all ahead of time, but I hadn’t accounted for the fact that I might be shaking so badly I couldn’t act as my own physician. Nevertheless, I had to rally. There was no choice. This was the crucial moment. My red hands were already blistering and I could dirt along with all of the invisible bacteria I couldn’t see but knew was there. I gritted my teeth and dipped my hands into a small barrel of gin and held them there as long as I could. I meticulously cleaned my fingers and scrubbed off any dirt that was stubbornly clinging. I couldn’t see or think very well, but the familiarity of dealing with wounds took over and I moved automatically. Binding my hands in honey and lavender.” I took a long draught of elderberry and oregano and prayed that the shock wouldn’t lower my immune system. t was warm in the smoker and there was no light except for the great kitchen fire. Young Peter sharpened a knife on the stone wall nearby and the rhythmic sound was soothing.

I closed my eyes for a half second, and that was the last thing I remembered.

My whole family likes to watch those video conglomerations where people do stupid stuff like faceplant off their unicycle and flip their cars into dumpsters. They have to talk me into joining them because I see nothing funny about watching people have possibly the worst day of their life. Tonight we watched a clip that started out with a bunch of beautiful young people in a hot tub (I immediately start looking for clowns hiding in the bushes or someone about to jump in from the roof). I hate that sense of impending doom! They're laughing and I want to warn them they statistically have less than three seconds before their fun implodes.

...or in this case explodes in a cloud of brown water as one poor girl clutches her stomach and you realize she is really quite ill (you've never seen a hot tub vacated so fast).

This is the problem with life. You never know when your super awesome "Spring Break" in Cancun will end with some bad tacos and you having to change your name and find all new friends. Just sayin'.

As someone with an overactive introverted brain trapped in an extroverted happy body, it's a constant battle to go through life imagining every possible outcome and yet still risk it open handedly.

Case in point, I was listening to a podcast today on the dangers of not letting children play unattended (beware of intended double negative). In theory, (and like most primates) children's' brains need lots of hours in the sunshine figuring out how the world and human interaction works. A child in 2017 gets less outdoor play time than an institutionalized patient in the 1950's. The problem is it's a lot harder to get in that prime time than it would seem. I'm lucky enough to have a fenced in backyard and a husband who pays for it all so I can teach the basic R's and pray I don't screw it all up somehow. Right now we have roofers trying to squeeze in an entire new roof before California drifts away in a flood. Which is wonderful...Charlie won't have to sleep with a bucket next to his head, but I have to wear my watch on the wrong wrist, and remind myself over and over that if I hear the back door unlock or open... RUN! (Because the two year old is fast and there are ladders involved in roofing).

I try really hard to juggle it all, but sometimes it's almost a relief when a virus sweeps in and knocks everyone off their feet. Wednesday found us all bundled up on the couch with fevers, tea and tissue (and by "tea" I mean force feeding them elderberry and echinacea). We were too sick to do school, but not sick enough for me to acquiesce to Vultron so we binge watched National Geographic instead.

Which means we can add baby seals being eaten by killer whales to the list of things I don't like to watch. But guess what new show they all clamored for this morning? National Geographic.

I better get at least one marine biologist or orthopedic surgeon from all of this.